In Age of Mythology, players represent different ancient cultures – Egyptians, Greek, or Norse – and attempt to create the most powerful culture through military conflict, city building, and cultural development. The game is based on the computer game of the same name, and shares many of the same characteristics.
The Pieces
This is no average boxed game. Each civilization has different troops, and there are tons of troops for each culture. The Norse have ogres, dwarves and dragons, the Greeks have hydras, medusae and cyclopes, and the Egyptians have mummies, sphinxes and scorpion men. Just cutting the plastic figures off the runners can take hours, because there are hundreds of little plastic soldiers. All the soldiers are fairly well sculpted and there is a great deal of diversity.
The game is played using cards to determine your actions, and the cards are beautiful. They represent different actions you can take, and the illustrations representing those actions are great. There are monsters and gods, priests and warriors, farmers and builders. These are very attractive cards.
One interesting facet of Age of Mythology is that while it is a board game, each player actually has his or her own board. These boards depict various portions of each culture – the city, the planning area, and the fertile production area. For the Egyptians, a large portion is desert. The Norse, on the other hand, have considerably more mountain land. The cities are simply an illustration overlaid with a grid, on which buildings are placed as they are built. The planning area of each board is beautifully illustrated and designed, and one of the visual high points of the game.
The playing pieces that designate assets are a little less appealing, however. The asset pieces depicting mountains, deserts, swamps and forest are fine, though not exceptional. The real disappointment comes in the city pieces, which have no art at all. I can see that it might have been difficult to design these little cards to show pretty pictures, but I would certainly have appreciated a little art. When you’re digging through a box full of identical cardboard chits, it can be tough to find the one you need just by the different words on its face.
The design and illustration on the rulebook is quite good, and the rules are written well enough that it is not difficult to figure out how to play the game. The rulebook is still fairly dense, and not as attractive as the book for some other Eagle Games products, but it is not a chore to read, and that counts for a lot.
The final components in the game are several standard dice and a couple hundred colored wooden cubes. The cubes are brightly colored to represent favor, wood, gold, food, and victory points.
The Game
The goal of Age of Mythology is not simple, as it revolves mainly around accumulating experience points and bidding on your most likely route to success. While players can accumulate some victory points as they play the game, most are gained in the last turn of the game. Players can earn points by having the most buildings at the end of the game, the largest army, or by being the player that builds The Wonder.
The playing of Age of Mythology is not particularly simple, either, though it can be quite fun and strategically rewarding. Each player receives a board representing his civilization, with the fourth, fifth and sixth players receiving duplicates (so there could be two Egyptian players, two Greek, and two Norse). Each board has the three areas mentioned before – holding area, production area, and city area.
Before the start of the turn, each player bets on which victory condition he will achieve, by placing red victory condition markers on the cards that reflect his chosen strategy. As players proceed, their goals may change, but depending on how players bet, it may become absolutely crucial to have the largest army or biggest city, and nobody might even care about building The Wonder.
Turns are played out by playing cards. Each player has a set of basic cards that represent standard actions – exploring, gathering, building, trading, recruiting, attacking, or proceeding to the next age. Special cards may be drawn, if a player is feeling lucky, that make these standard actions cheaper or more powerful. Players get a number of cards based on the age to which their civilization has progressed, and they perform actions based on these cards.
When a player explores, everyone takes turns flipping over production counters and placing them in their production area. Strategy plays a part in this action, as everyone gets to choose production counters, but the player that played the explore card goes first. Good choices can deprive other players of good land, or even make them unable to pick something – if your deserts are already full and the only land left is desert, you’re out of luck.
Gathering allows all players to gather resources from their production areas based on the production counters present there. For instance, if a player has two gold in a desert area and one wood in a forest, he may pull those cubes from the common pot. If there are no more gold cubes in the pot, those resources are simply unavailable. Since every player gets to gather, the player who goes first can seriously hamper later players.
Building allows players to spend their resource cubes to erect buildings in their city areas. Only the player that played the card can build. Different buildings provide different bonuses – houses provide villagers, who can increase production, while walls or towers can protect the town in case of attack. Siege engine factories, storage facilities, and more are all available for building, with different costs for each.
Recruiting allows a player to build his army. He can only recruit a few soldiers, based on the card he plays to recruit, and he is restricted to recruiting from his current age or earlier.
Trading allows a player to swap resources, trading gold for food, wood for favor, or otherwise getting what he needs for future transactions.
Next Age cards allow players to proceed to the next age in their progression, so that they have more play options. The Wonder cannot be built into a player has progressed to the fourth age, and players in later ages have decided advantages over those in earlier ages.
Attacking is the sketchiest part of the game. It is easy enough to do – each of two players selects a set number of units and the two do battle. Each unit is selected in secrecy, as some units are strong against some types and weak against others. Then each player rolls a big handful of dice, with the player rolling more sixes beating the other.
The attack system is my biggest complaint with Age of Mythology. When one player has vastly superior forces, he should be able to count on a victory. Instead, the dependence on rolling a six means that a thoroughly pathetic force can destroy a marauding force of monsters and never suffer a loss, just because luck dictates that one player sucks today. It is infuriating to lose a battle completely because of luck. If you decide to play this game, I highly recommend a house rule that allows a successful roll on a five or six.
Play continues to proceed, with each player playing cards and performing actions, until one player builds The Wonder or the last victory point is placed on one of the cards. At the end of the game, everyone counts up armies and cities, with the largest in each category getting the victory points on that card. If a player built The Wonder, he gets the points on that card. The player with the most victory points wins the game.
Observations
Age of Mythology is a very attractive game, and the game play is original and stimulating. Unfortunately, it is rather complex, and the battle system is so broken that it could cause considerable profanity from the old lady who plays the organ at church. The game is quite different from traditional games, and has a ton of cool components, but it requires gamers with patience and a willingness to either fix the battle system or avoid attacking completely.
Style: 4 – Mostly attractive pieces, though the building counters are curiously undecorated.
Substance: 4 – Good strategy and innovative game play are severely hampered by a poorly-devised battle system.
